


An Opal In The Monochrome, Part 1

by chimeraproblems



Series: An Opal In The Monochrome [1]
Category: Caves of Qud (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, the girls kiss, vague lategame qud spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 17:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11212767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimeraproblems/pseuds/chimeraproblems
Summary: Before the protagonist sets off on Q Girl's latest task, she has to figure out what to do with all these feelings.





	An Opal In The Monochrome, Part 1

They called her Weary Paw Mara. They said she drew her strength from the salt-choked earth itself, that she needed neither food nor sleep as her four shapely legs carried her across the salt-pans, marshes, and jungles of Qud. They said that neither the poisons of Golgotha nor the frost of Bethesda Susa could wither her, and that when her four blades plied the air they carried the scent of jasmine in their wake. Jasmine and blood. The new favorite of the Barathrumites - spoken dismissively by the foes of the diligent subterranean collective of urshiib, and reverently by those who envied their technological marvels. Indeed, few could boast of gaining audience with the reclusive tinkers. Mara could, but those who met her would tell you she wouldn't, for she kept her own counsel.

In truth, there was one urshiib above the rest, even the elder himself, who held her favor.

Q Girl.

Like her ursine comrades, Q Girl stood taller than a human, with the white fur of her chest hardening into quills bristling all along her back. But though she sported the albinism emblematic of the urshiib, she supplanted it by tattooing herself with embellished patterns of diodes and circuitry, and by dying her hair into an aurora of cascading hues. Her long, multi-jointed hands were graced with a custom-tailored pair of ulnar stimulators, perfect for delicate adjustments, while her fuzzy ears and nose sported a dazzling collection of gemstones fashioned into geometric piercings. She was brilliant, and well-loved by the Barathrumites.

Naturally, when the time comes to speak to her of her most ambitious creation to date, Mara's steady heart beats a tic faster. She enters the workshops and gives a tiny wave from across the room. Q Girl's eyes flicker over at the movement and apologetic panic paints itself broadly across her features, her focus suddenly torn between her visitor and the detuned oscilloscope before her as her mechanical exoskeleton keeps her limbs perfectly still for her digits to make minute adjustments.

Mara busies herself browsing the nearby Sparafucile's schematics, though in truth she had already drawn forth much of that knowledge from the surviving relics she found on her long journeys. It's more as a courtesy to Q Girl. Finally, with a sudden pop followed by a gentle hum, the oscilloscope returns to life, and Q Girl turns her full attentions to Mara.

"Quetzal, quetzal! Sorry about the wait, friend," she says.

"It's no trouble," rumbles Mara. "Yours is an unmistakeable artistry, a pleasure to witness. You make them sing."

"Quetzal! You and your honeytongue. What brings you here?"

Mara takes a deep breath, conscious of breaking the peace of their conversation with the magnitude of her request. "The elder has tasked me with delivering your grand schematic to Pax Klanq for construction."

"To the heart of the rainbow... one moment, brave friend, I'll have it copied to your disk shortly."

Mara produces her data disk, and as she passes it to Q Girl, their fingers meet.

It has happened only once before, the last time she encoded something to one of Mara's disks. But this time, it seems to weave a spell between them. Neither dares to breathe. Mara, heart pounding, lets her vision drift and dares to open herself to the history of Q Girl's stimulators.

It fills her and she drinks it in. A rush of sensations - disjointed and unmoored as they enter her, yet each burst filled with the orderly and precise sentiments of machinery. The primordial stirrings of each component part lying unassembled on her workbench - the care and love poured into each as her fingers mold them into something greater that themselves - the thrill of being whole, of being a conduit through which she can cobble together greater things - the safety and satisfaction of ensconcing her hands, her beautiful hands.

A routine electric pulse from the stimulators snaps them back and breaks the contact.

Q Girl hurriedly clasps the insulated disk to her breast. "Oh, oh! Sorry, friend! Are you-"

"It's nothing," says Mara, daring to breathe again. "I have a pair of my own, I'm quite used to it."

"Quetzal! Wonderful things, aren't they? Not for everyone, but certainly for me. And for you too, I'm happy to hear!" She busies herself at a nearby terminal, transferring the necessary files over.

Mara says nothing, simply watching her dextrous fingers play over the terminal's inputs. She notices - or perhaps remembers from her mechanical reverie - the clawtips of Q Girl's longest digits seem to be filed down and blunted. Surely, to help with fine-detail work.

"There, now we just wait for the transfer to complete," says Q Girl. She steps back from the console and picks up a spanner almost unconsciously, spinning it in her grasp.

"I read your book," says Mara. Q Girl's face lights in a mixture of excitement and embarrassment as she continues. "I found it in the pack of a snapjaw in the canyons east of the Stilt. Had I known his scholarly bent, I would have stayed my blades to converse with him, but alas, he afforded me no such opportunity."

"Ah," says Q Girl. Her expression sinks. "And had I known you wished to read it I would have given you a copy, friend. Perhaps then such bloodshed would have been avoided."

Mara, conscious of her mistake, scratches the back of her head with an upper arm, her lower arms crossing below her breast defensively. "It's... I am sorry. In many ways my travels have hardened me."

"No, Mara, I should-" Q Girl flaps her unoccupied hand in frustration, to return her words to their proper order. "No one here could do what you have done for us but you. Don't doubt yourself for my account."

Mara unfolds herself, a bashful grin spreading over her verdant snout. "Ah, but your book! I could feel your artistry in every word."

"Quetzal, quetzal!" Through the shorter fur of her cheeks, a blush subtly spreads. "You think so? It was downright agony to order them sometimes. There's this model in my head, of entropy and hierarchies, and it's shining and clear. But to translate that model through limited semantics, through the confusion of language... well, I vastly prefer the elegance of schematics. I'm glad you made sense of it!"

"Of course! I've felt it too, when I open myself to the history of a machine."

"Oh, quetzal! Go on, please!"

Now Mara's cheeks start to flush, like leaves in the autumn of the old world. "Well, take a carbine. Each will do much the same thing, but even within their class, there are different designs, built by different peoples for different purposes."

"And you _feel_ this?"

"I do! I can't explain it. It... it bleeds through. It's a taste, a sentiment I get. I can tell when one was made to enforce a deadly hierarchy just as I can tell when one was made to combat it. The latter... tastes better."

"That is a completely quetzal way to interface with things! Mara, you're incredible!"

"Now who's the honeytongue?" blushes Mara.

"Can I ask...? The carbine we gave you, when you returned from Golgotha. How does it... taste?"

"Sparafucile's?" There's a hint of reverence in Mara's voice as she unslings the formidable carbine from her shoulder, holding it before her. "It's a masterwork. It's saved my life more times now than I can count. There's so much love, so much solidarity poured into every rivet, every pin - and to be entrusted with this? To be a part of this? It's... humbling."

"Quetzal! Spara, did you hear that?"

Across the room, Sparafucile gives a silent thumbs-up.

There's a soft chime from the console as it ejects the data disk. "Oh, the transfer! Here, friend."

Q Girl sets aside her spanner to pass the disk to Mara, cradling it delicately with both paws. Mara steps closer.

"Q Girl..."

Her lower pair of hands cup around Q Girl's outstretched paws as she meets her gaze. When they had first met, it was her hair that drew her in. She tracked in, caked with salt from the nameless river where she washed away Golgotha's poisons, soaked with sweat from the trek back to Grit Gate, and they let her in, _truly_ let her in, and there was Q Girl, shimmering in the soft glow of the compound.

They thought her bold for returning alive from that hellish sewer, but that was merely her duty. What was truly bold, bedraggled as she was, was what she had said then to Q Girl. _"Your hair is a quasar of red ochre and indigo."_

Mara's breath catches in her throat, her heart pounding, her mind racing for the words. Q Girl stands, her gaze unfaltering, mouth slightly agape, her hands sinking into Mara's grasp.

"The elder has tasked me with finding the heart of the rainbow."

She reaches out with her upper hand, slowly, questing for that technicolor constellation framing Q Girl's open, ursine face. Her fingers thread softly through her hair, brushing the side of her face, and Q Girl gasps, leaning subtly into the contact. Mara steps closer still.

"I already have."

Mara drifts closer, drawing in the heat of Q Girl's breath, the scent of a subterranean omnivore compensating for a poor sleep schedule with good hygiene. Q Girl senses Mara's in turn, vaguely floral, hinting at the nectar of her body and the blood of recent trauma, and the spice of witchwood.

They kiss.

Tentatively at first, heads cocked for their snouts to interlock, neither quite daring to believe it's true. Then Q Girl softly hums, pressing herself deeply against her, dropping the disk into her waiting hands to drape hers around Mara's vine-wreathed neck. Mara stuffs it haphazardly into a saddlebag before reaching forward again, bringing her other upper hand up to stroke the other side of her face as her lower arms wrap carefully around her sturdy, quill-bedecked waist.

"Quetzal," she breathes, pulling back for a moment before burying her snout in Mara's floral mane. "Quetzal, quetzal, quetzal!"

Mara laughs softly, petting through Q Girl's rainbow hair and scratching behind her ears, breathing in her enticing animal musk, shivering as pulses from the tinker's stimulators play up and down her long, long spine.

"Mara, Mara, wow!" The words bubble up from her before she kisses her once again. "What do I say?"

"You don't have to say a word," rumbles Mara, kissing her back. "But I would love if you did. Because I love your words. Because- I love _you,_ Q Girl."

"Quetzal! You- All of you, you're-" The words stumble out of her in an ecstatic shower. She reaches up, clasping Mara's cheeks, threading her claws through her vine-hair, and kisses her, hard.

"Mara I love you too. Oh, quetzal!"

They stand, clasped together, basking in each other's warmth and presence, giggling and shivering.

"Mara, would you like to..." she trails off, her mouth silently chewing through the possibilities.

"I would like to do absolutely whatever you would like to do," says Mara.

"Quetzal! Spara, dear?" she calls across the workshop. "Watch the shops, would you? Mara and I... have a lot of theories to discuss."

Sparafucile, politely pretending not to have noticed, raises a silent thumbs-up.

"Now, friend, I've never shown you my room, have I?"

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when you get too attached to a successful mutated human warden with multiple arms, multiple legs, photosynthetic skin, and psychometry. if you'd like to give mara's build a try yourself, her code is BJQMMOEIBNBOBPBRDPED. she could probably be a little bit more min/maxed, but as it is she's a pretty durable generalist, especially if your first skill goal is charge.
> 
> why does q girl say quetzal so much? because it's a semantic extension of the feeling she gets when she sees a quetzal!! play caves of qud, ya dingus!!
> 
> THE NEXT TWO PARTS GET EXPLICIT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED


End file.
